The point is not that she looks ugly, but rather.. - ugh. Never mind, even.

It's because it doesn't look like a strong draenei warrior/paladin , but a blue japananese schoolgirl with horns.
Wich is fine for some I guess, but it's not what I have in mind whene I picture a draenei.

It's because it doesn't look like a strong draenei warrior/paladin , but a blue japananese schoolgirl with horns.
Wich is fine for some I guess, but it's not what I have in mind whene I picture a draenei.

^ that. Like I said a few pages before, I don't mind cute options for any race because it's not unreasonable. But to litter the game with so many cute options that people lose touch with what the race actually is and start thinking it's hentai fuel instead makes me sad.

So no, I didn't think that draenei was ugly. Only that she was oversexualized and overly cutesy for an ancient, magical race with demonic ties.

It's because it doesn't look like a strong draenei warrior/paladin , but a blue japananese schoolgirl with horns.
Wich is fine for some I guess, but it's not what I have in mind whene I picture a draenei.

fem draenei in-game models do look like japanese schoolgirls with horns. goblin girls have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more muscle than draenei.

fem draenei in-game models do look like japanese schoolgirls with horns. goblin girls have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more muscle than draenei.

I don't think they look like japanese schoolgirls that much ingame, just like blue, horned blood elves. They somehow look.. too tame for an ancient alien species.

That said, I have good hopes for draenei to look somewhat similar to that art I linked before. Blizzard tends to pretty much follow Glowei's art as long as they can, and that draenei (http://us.media.blizzard.com/wow/med...nei3-large.jpg) was created by Glowei after all.

Tyrande: stays somewhat the same, only a few minor difference such as the enchanted robe and hairstyle, and that model seemed to have been created to fit her now and in WoE. Maybe Tyrande is going to get updated too, soon -- when they feel like it - and the model she currently has may be incorrect in that case. After all, even if less accurate, it's always better than the model she had before Cataclysm, which was a basic night elf.

Thrall: Looks largely the same in the face. The difference is that he no longer wears Orgrim Doomhammer's armor. The face does somewhat look like in the Mosaic.

Worgen female: This one looks the least like in the art. Actually, the alpha female worgen model looked pretty accurate to the art, so personally, I can let it slip this one time. I can still say that Blizzard initially based their female worgen around Glowei's art at least somewhat.

Vol'jin: Vol'jin is a big indication. Vol'jin was modeled after the Battle Mosaic art of him. Period.

So in general, draenei are the biggest offenders when it comes to the rule of Blizzard at least taking Glowei's art in mind - if we ignore the atrocity called the female worgen live model!

i don't even think this is an issue of oversexualization. i mean, the alpha models looked appropriately wolf-y while still beeing very feminine or even pretty.
but for some reason they decided to give them hair that just look like a pricky shrub, ears that look more like those of bats rather than wolves, and forever-growl-y mouths in an attempt to make them look more ferocious (rather than pretty).

I've played a lot of other mmos and rpg games that follow this kind of theme, sword, magic, big battles and set in big magical worlds. And I got to be honest, well they all have there own element of what makes them good (or not so good), one thing warcraft does that the others doesn't is diversity in races.

In many other mmorpgs or rpgs of this kind of genre, you end up having just human races, or elf races, or just your basic varient of humans with maybe slightly less human features, but still, they don't fall far from the tree. Games like rift, warhammer, starwars, elder scrolls, they all have there own unique quality, but what they lack for me is that diversity of races wow has.
Even games that take right from wow itself by design, like allods online, has two human races in it, and a couple of other ones.

When it comes down to unique characterization and design for races, nothing really can beat wow for choice. Sure we can't modify our chosen race to be bigger or smaller, but given the diversity of races in the game it doesn't make it feel like we're just choosing a clone of the last 50 other players.

And of course the style. Warcraft for how it stands, is VERY much a comic book themed art style. The kind of artwork you'd be use to seeing in DC and Marvel comics, you see it here, the ingame design doesn't try to make things look real, but it treats it seriously enough to give depth to the characters we play as, just like a comic book artist would give to the characters they draw, without making them completely realistic.
And thats the charm of the characters in wow. There not designed to be real, but they have there own seriousness to them set in there own universe.

to that end, anyone who ever read comics and thought 'man wonder woman is so hot!' or 'I wish hulks purple pants would rip off too', world of warcraft fits the bill perfectly for that kind of people. And as it seems, there are more people playing mmo's who appreciate this kind of character design then they let on to, millions of them infact.

This is why i like the bulky characters like draenei, tauren and orcs, because I don't need to think serious with them in design, I can just appreciate there look the same as I did when I read x-men and the super pumped heroes in spandex flashed across the pages.

i agree, Trassk, and their uniqueness is one of the (many) reasons why i love draenei so much.

i gotta say though, gw2 did a pretty good job with creative and diverse races too. asuran and nord may not be all that new, but charr are, and especially sylvari. and when it comes to npc races as well (quaggans! \o/).
even humans are different from the typical fantasy setting, in that they are the endangered species fighting for survival, most of their great civilization lying in ruins, still showing great faith in their gods, even though those have been silent for so long. most of that stuff is typically associated with elves or dwarves, while the humans are the racist upstarts, stomping all the beautiful old cities into the ground.

swtor is just... bleh. they have a good amount of races, but they all share the exact same model and animations except for some changes on head and color (even faces and hairstyles are still mostly the same). although to be fair, swtor features so many more animations, even facial ones, than other games/mmos, that creating a new 'skelleton' for 5-10 races would need a lot of work.
still, it feels really bland and uninspired.

thats why whenever I see a new mmorpg or just rpg game out, I search to see what there character customization is like first. If all they can give you is the same character model with nothing really special, then I don't bother with it, kind of like how DC universal felt.